Pre-pandemic Neighborhood Christmas Decorations--Yea, 2019

Why 2019 Christmas decorations? Partly because I had pix that I didn't get around to organizing. Another reason is my mental contrasting what I've seen this year to what I'd taken pix of last year. Seems this year I've seen fewer balloons (varieties and quantity).

Most of the pix were daytime, some at night. Join me in the short trek and look for the following items in the video:

• Scene that includes dragon that seems to want to party beyond Halloween
• Couple of scenes of penguins with snowmen
• Christmas candy train
• Christmas tree train ("Santa's Tree Farm")
• Train with Santa, snowman, and penguin
• Santa and reindeer, without Rudolph ("North Pole Stable", with reindeer names)
• Couple of scenes with bipolar critters (polar bears, penguins)
• Disco Santa ("Christmas Night Fever"), red-suited, not Angel-Flights suited.
• At the slideshow end, a couple of lighted Christmas tree decorations, one actually a windmill with pyramid/conical base, another a lookalike.
  The time stamps showed 9 minutes difference between the pix. Because the final picture did not show a windmill mechanism, I concluded that I took the pictures at different places.

After viewing, re-viewing, editing, and preparing images for the slide show video, I noticed with amusement how all the penguins seem to be tot-sized. Thinking emperor penguin looks, but black and white rather than gray-fuzzy-feathered and white like the ones in "Happy Feet" and "March of the Penguins".

December 31, 2021: Visit "2021 Christmas Decorations Tour" (video, article), my 26-site tour of video clips. As I started organizing my project clips, I initially felt the pandemic pall colored my perception of the decorations. As I continued the process, my spirits lifted. In comparing my 2021 captures to my 2019 (pre-pandemic) captures, I notice more and varying images, not fewer. Hope you enjoy the ride and sights! May 2022 be more joyous than 2020 and 2021!

Kool-Aided Cake Mix Cookies Combo Batch

Around winter holiday season, chocolate-covered cherries tend to float into my consciousness. Another chocolate and cherry concoction has also been staring at me recently when I open the freezer: ice cream with cherries and chocolate chips "H-E-B Select Ingredients Creamy Creations Cherry & Chocolate Limited Edition Ice Cream". One yummy I wanted to buy so I could add chocolate chips and make cookies with is a cherry-chip cake mix. Unfortunately, have heard the supply is spotty "Betty Crocker Super Moist Cherry Chip Cake Mix".

The basic cooky recipe uses cake mix, eggs, and oil. For flavor and color enhancements, I added a package of Cherry Kool-Aid and 10 drops of red food coloring. Another cooky variation is a chocolatey covered one. BTW, I used Black Cherry Kool-Aid for my "Kool-Aided Cake", an experiment. It turned out so well that I rationalized that Kool-Aided cookies could turn out well. View the video for full details of preparing one, two, or three types of cherry-themed cookies.

While thinking about implementation, I decided that chocolate in a form or two would be interesting. My recent foray into chocolate coating and also chips with mint themes inspired me to borrow from those ideas. The intention, besides making tasty cookies, was to improve on similar processes. Additional ingredients for this combo-batch cooky recipe are red food coloring, chocolate chips, and optionally, white chocolate "bark".

Because of the nature of dough stiffness, I recommend using a tilt-head mixer. If you use a pastry blender, wire whip, or hand mixer, stamina would be helpful. Another helpful item is a cooky press for shaping and dispensing cooky dough pieces. Or you can use a tablespoon-and-spatula method.

Cooky Press Thoughts—Disks

I misplaced my Wilton cooky press container, which showed the baked cooky shapes for each disk. The images for the following models look mostly similar.

• "Preferred Press Cookie Press, 13-Piece"
• "Wilton Cookie Pro Ultra II Deluxe Cookie Press". View the useful image of the disks.
• "Wilton Cookie Pro Ultra II With 3 Bonus Disks. (20)"

Cooky Press Thoughts—Dispenser Trigger Squeezes

Using 1 1/2 trigger squeezes of the cooky press yields suitable size cookies.

• "A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch"
• "Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--Easter"

For the cookies for "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies", I used two trigger squeezes per cooky. I think the heavier cooky made chocolatey dipping more awkward and used a lot more coating. The yield was fewer than I liked. I'll use 1 1/2 trigger squeezes when using a cooky press.